


When it Wakes

by Irishgrlnextdoor



Series: Halloween Bats [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Creepy, Demonic Possession, Horror, No Gore, Possession, Psychological Horror, Tim Drake Has a Bad Time, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake-centric, possessed dick grayson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 13:34:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29901861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irishgrlnextdoor/pseuds/Irishgrlnextdoor
Summary: For Nightwing and Red Robin, it was a routine breakup of a demon summoning ritual. But still, things go wrong, and Tim's never had any reason to fear Dick before, but now he can attest...He's very afraid.My 3rd installment for my scary short stories in my "Halloween Bats" collection (you do not need to read them all or in any particular order. They are all separate short stories)
Relationships: Tim Drake & Dick Grayson, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne
Series: Halloween Bats [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954837
Comments: 6
Kudos: 47





	When it Wakes

**Author's Note:**

> This one I've been holding onto and tweaking since mid 2020. I started making it into a real monster (puns always intended), and then worked it back down into something short that I could be happy with. My thanks to Lady_Paper_Writerson for giving tips on a very rough snippet of this way back then, I saved your tips and tried to stay true to them in this version, which I can finally share.

“This is the worst,” Dick complained over the coms to anyone that would listen, “I’m sorry but this is just horrible! Atrocious!”

“Are you serious?” Tim’s hushed whisper came back in his ear. “Compared to our average call for breaking and entering, this is nothing. No mafia, no hostages, no masked baddies… this is as easy a bust as we ever get.”

“Yes, but compared to all the occult rituals we’ve ever been privy to this is by far the worst. Again, just horrible,” Dick griped. “Those candles are frosting-scented for crying out loud! I’ll bet you anything that they picked this stuff up from a Grab n’ Go on the way here. Their sacrificial blood is sitting in a coffee thermos. And do you even see the sloppy penmanship of the incantations they chalked onto the floor?”

There was a stifled chuckle, but he could still hear the amusement seeping into Tim’s voice as it came back over the coms, getting into the spirit with him. “Well, hopefully whoever they’re trying to summon is as fussy as you and will refuse to show up.”

Dick snorted as he moved into a better position to get the drop on the unsuspecting trespassers that had broken their way into the long-abandoned Blockbuster Rental building in downtown Gotham. The would-be cult had managed not to trip any alarms, Dick and Tim stumbled upon their B&E by chance during routine patrol.

While Dick had a good view of them through the side windows of the building, Tim was slipping in through the back to help corner them.

“You know, I think their biggest problem is actually the location.” Dick further complained into his com, “No self-respecting demon is going to ever be caught dead in a building that was once a Donut King.”

“I thought this place was a Blockbuster.”

“Yeah, but before that it was a Donut King.” Dick hummed a few bars of the old jingle. “When life gets mean, just share a donut with the king. Donut King!”

There was a long silence before Tim’s voice crackled back in his ear disparagingly. “God, you’re old.”

“Hey!”

“Nightwing, Red Robin, focus.” Bruce’s firm order cut in over the coms, fed up with their banter in his ear while he patrolled the east corridor of Gotham with Robin.

“Why am I getting yelled at?” Tim’s voice asked over the com in indignation. “Nightwing was the one singing despite our now long-standing rule of ‘no singing on the coms’.”

Dick scoffed, continuing to watch the seven gathered in the front of the building as they started passing around their summoning scripts to read off of. It was clearly printed off on just regular copy paper. Not even any decent parchment. Truly horrible stuff, he felt insulted on behalf of whoever they were hoping to see tonight.

He opened his com back up. “B. the last problem we have here is my singing, and that’s saying a lot. You should see the setup these guys have. It’s absolute bullshit, really. What occultist thinks it’s acceptable to show up to a summoning wearing jeans?”

“Watch the swearing,” Batman’s deep growl warned him. “There’s a child on this channel.”

“Really father,” Damian groused in the coms now, “I am forced to endure the graphic imagery that is Drake’s face daily but the line is to be drawn at adult language?”

Dick didn’t hear Tim give any official response over the coms, but he heard it in his soul as Tim called Damian a few inappropriate words of his own from the other end of the building they were in.

“ _Everyone_ , _focus_ ,” came the order, sharper than before, just wanting to end the conversation.

Dick watched as the summoners really started ramping up their invocations anyway, and thus they probably needed to get going, just to be safe. “We’re set to go anyway, Baby Bird. Mind if I take lead and drive them back towards you?”

“You just want to take lead because you plan to say one of your _lines_ as soon as you jump out on them,” Tim groaned in his ear.

Dick grinned and got out his escrima sticks. “I got a really good one ready,” he promised.

“What is it?” Tim dared to ask.

“I kick a little butt and then when they run I yell, ‘Too bad about your failed summoning fellas, but I summon… Blue Eyes Red Robin, in attack position!’ -and then you come in.”

Tim sounded like he was in a fair amount of pain when he finally responded. Dick thought maybe he had heard Bruce groan somewhere in there too. “Are you trying to make a Yugioh reference? In this day and age?”

 _More like succeeding._ Dick’s grin widened. “Yeah well, unlike these guys out here, my summoning is going to actually work.”

“I’m taking lead,” Tim insisted.

“Aw, you take the fun out of everything,” Dick snickered. “Okay on three. One, two…”

X

Tim was completely shell-shocked, sitting next to Dick’s bed, face chapped from tears and sweat both that had long-dried and a cold hollow dread filling his stomach in place of any actual food. He hadn’t eaten anything in the last 24 hours, but he wasn’t hungry. Alfred’s chicken noodle soup sat cold on the bed-side table next to him. Bruce had been nearly inseparable from the cave, running tests, double checking all the vitals and body samples he had taken from Dick because they had all come back clean.

Dick’s pulse was healthy, heart beeping away on the monitor that had been set up next to his bed. His breathing was deep and steady, his bloodwork clean. Even the urine sample Bruce had gotten had indicated perfect health. Dr Leslie had come out to confirm it all, and even took more samples to double check back in her own labs. Those were also turning up nothing out of the ordinary.

He was just sleeping.

Except, they couldn’t wake him.

They couldn’t get any response from him at all.

He had been unconscious for nearly 30 hours now, ever since they had bungled their drop in on the cult. It had been going well- up until it suddenly wasn’t. The occultists had indeed been amateurs, just as Dick had pegged them for. They had tried to run rather than fight, just a bunch of delusionists that had been trying out a spell that they had confessed to getting in a mystery box they had ordered off of a dark-web site. In their panicked running, however, they had run across their own ritual markers, smearing them up, and then one had knocked into Nightwing on pure accident while trying to escape Tim.

Tim still wasn’t certain what had happened because it had been so fast, but he had seen Dick catch his balance, foot coming down on one of the marks they had drawn on the ground, and then he was down.

And that had yet to change for the vigilante. Dick still looked to just be sleeping, still the picture of perfect health otherwise. His face was peaceful. Just sleeping. It was an illusion only further made by the fact he now laid in his old bed in the manor, dressed in some of the old sleep clothes he had left behind.

Tim reached out and touched his wrist, needing to feel that it was still warm, that Dick was still fine, despite being perfectly able to see that on the monitors and in the rise and fall of the man’s chest under his old Gotham Knight’s baseball shirt.

It was warm, but he yanked his hand back as if he had been burned when the bedroom door opened behind him.

“Hey, Timbo” Jason greeted, voice rough as he padded his way across the carpet. Alfred had called him, right after Bruce had called Leslie. Tim had been shocked when Jason had actually come, but that paled in comparison when Jason had gone so far as to stay the night after seeing Dick, taking up his old bedroom as well.

Tim gave only a small hum to acknowledge him. He wasn’t trying to be rude, he just knew why Jason was here. He would be taking Tim’s spot, ready to watch over Dick’s sleep. He had a book in his hand, ready to settle in with it while he waited around to see if Dick might come back to them. “Consider yourself replaced, Replacement. Why don’t you go get some sleep of your own?”

Tim ran a hand over his bleary eyes to clear them, and then with a deep sigh he hauled himself up. “I’m good, I can go over the mask cam footage again if Bruce is done with it.”

“He’s out,” Jason informed him, “Went with Robin to hunt down the sender of that cute little ‘DIY sleeping-beauty’ package those occultists dorks got a hold of and give them a matching cell.” His teal eyes narrowed skeptically on Tim. Any other time Tim might have flinched from such a look, but he was simply too tired. “How much sleep have you gotten since all this happened?” the older man demanded of him, teal eyes narrowed even further like he was preparing to look straight through a bullshit answer if he was given one. Tim would normally pad his hours when anyone asked him about sleep, so he didn’t blame him for that skepticism. He still tried, call it bad habit. “Two? Kind of… well, barely.”

Jason made a small hum, but didn’t berate him like Alfred would have. Tim only then realized… Jason didn’t look any better off than he did, his own narrowed eyes bloodshot because they hadn’t gotten proper rest either. “Well, maybe think about it. Bruce already has Constantine looking at the cam footage. Even if he needed a second pair of eyes to assist, I doubt your tired ones would be his first pick.”

Tim half heard the logic in that, but merely shrugged. He had been with Dick, his partner on patrol when this had happened. He should have been watching his back better, not driving a perp into it. This was on him if it was on anyone.

Jason looked at him as if that had all been voiced out loud, giving a small sigh and shake of his head. With only a soft punch that could hardly be called a punch at all against Tim’s shoulder, Jason took up his abandoned seat and flipped through his book, old and well-worn from his old collection. “Alright Dick-face, I hope you’re up for some Peter Pan.”

Tim left them to it, closing the door behind him softly… only to laugh at himself because he had done it so as not to disturb Dick. Because he was sleeping. Tim pushed down the thought that it might be better to slam it in hopes of disturbing him, turning and making his way back to his own room where his own mini bat-computer setup awaited him.

X

Tim didn’t mean to sleep, but he woke up when he hit the ground.

Maybe just before that, during the fall, but it was definitely the pain of hitting the ground that woke him up for real. His groan of pain rolled out of him as he twisted around and brought one of his legs down off of the desk chair that it was still hung up on. His dual computer monitors offered the only light in his room, casting it in a soft blue. The digital clock in the corner told him it was just after 3:00 AM.

With another groan Tim straightened himself out further, cussing to find he wasn’t just sore, but wet too. He had managed to bring down a cup of stale cold coffee with him in his tumble. Alfred was going to kill him for the stain it was going to leave on the carpet, but if Tim used one of the man’s good towels to clean it up with he would first skin him alive. He got up to make his way to the linen closet where the spare towels were kept.

Tim trudged out of his room, wiping at the coffee drops on his arm, only to pull up short in the doorway.

He wasn’t the only one up. Dick was in the hall, down at the far end, standing and facing him, but unmoving. Tim thought at first they had managed to surprise each other, but Dick remained still even as Tim’s heart leapt in his chest to see the man awake and on his feet… but all Tim’s words of relief and joy dried up on his tongue because something felt… off.

Something just felt wrong. Firstly, there was the chill that Tim walked into the moment he had crossed into the hall. And the still way that Dick continued to stand there, gaze locked upon him… it wasn’t altogether friendly. Even with about thirty to forty feet between them, Tim’s instincts still went on alert.

“Dick, you’re up? Are you… are you alright?” Dumb question really, and way to state the obvious, Tim chastised himself internally.

No answer.

Tim wet his inexplicably dry lips to try again, even as the cold increased, raising every hair along his arms and on the back of his neck. “Dick, I get the irony of this, but should you really be out of bed? We don’t know what was making you sleep.”

Still, no answer, no movement, but somehow Dick seemed just a little closer to him. Mere inches, but Tim swore he was no longer just outside of his doorway, closer than that now.

His heart was hammering in his chest, blood starting to race, causing a sweat to bead along Tim’s hairline, and still he couldn’t reason out why his body was flooding itself with adrenaline. A nervous reaction, exacerbated by his lack of sleep? The onrush of his extreme relief that Dick was finally awake confusing his chemical receptors? Or maybe something his subconscious was picking up on that he wasn’t. Tim was surprised by the slight waver in his own voice with his next question. “Where’s Jason?”

For a moment he thought he wouldn’t get a response again, but then Dick’s voice echoed down to him. “Come here, Tim.”

It felt so cold in the hall, Tim’s actually shivered, his body held back from complying by instincts that usually only presented themselves when he was in a uniform. But it was just Dick…

Along with those instincts so familiar to his days as Robin, his old coping mechinisms reared their heads as well in the form of flippant sass. “Hey Dick, can you maybe humor me and … I don’t know, blink or something?” Tim gritted, standing firm, trying to lighten the situation- whatever was going on. “Because if you weren’t aware, you hanging out in the hall like this, it’s kind of sort of definitely creepy.”

That was the cue for Dick to crack a joke back. To laugh, or start making fun by groaning and doing a Frankenstein walk at him. Or even do that scary as fuck spider crawl from the Exorcist that he sometimes liked to freak Tim out with. Tim hated that one more than anything. 

Instead, he responded with a firmer, “Come here, Tim.”

Was he even closer now? Maybe just a few more inches? Tim had been watching. He wasn’t looking away. How was that possible? Tim stepped back into his doorway, just a little bit. His body continued to shiver slightly under the cold, but he still didn’t know why. It wasn’t logical. “I… I’m good here. Dick, come on. What’s going o-

Tim didn’t get to finish, cut off by the sudden surge of fear from somewhere deep inside when Dick suddenly broke into movement. His older brother charged- full out charged down the hall at him, feet pounding against the floor as he ate up the distance, face twisted up to something almost unrecognizable with malicious intent.

Tim jumped back into his room, terrified, slamming the door closed and snapping the lock even though it was useless because Dick wasn’t stopping. He wasn’t slowing. His footfalls pounded in Tim’s ears as they closed in on his door. Dick was going to slam right into it, break through it… get to him… do… he didn’t even know what.

Tim only knew he didn’t want to find out, bracing himself against the door as if he could hope to keep Dick out. At the moment of impact… only silence.

Nothing happened. Nothing hit the door. Even though there was no way Dick could have stopped himself. He had run full force right up to the point of the door. He had to be just on the other side, but stopping like that… even Tim didn’t know how he could have done it, Robin tricks and all.

“Dick, what the hell?” Tim cried out, furious and just a little bit seriously shaken.

Again came that silence that filled Tim with something cold and empty.

This wasn’t like Dick, even at his worst teasing. This was malicious, cruel. This was… _shit_ , Tim had actually felt scared. Scared of _Dick,_ the one member of his family he had yet to ever inspire such an emotion within him. Why was he doing this?

Tim didn’t know, but he felt the fear curl up within him, twisting out a bit of anger. “Knock it off, Dick, this isn’t funny! Why are you doing this?”

Tim continued to listen, ear pressed to his door, but he heard nothing.

He looked down. The seam of light under his door showed the shadow of someone standing just on the other side of it.

“Dick… _fuck_ , just… will you just _fucking_ say something?” Tim demanded.

“Come here, Tim.”

Jesus, no. Tim slammed his fist against his own door in outrage.

No response.

Still that shadow at his door didn’t move. What the hell was Dick doing? If he seriously wanted to get inside he could. So why was he stalling like this? Playing with Tim? Did he have a lock pick? Tim didn’t hear anything like that in his lock. The knob remained untouched.

Dick didn’t try to force his way in. So was he really just messing with Tim? This was too cruel for Dick, a truth in Tim’s heart that he couldn’t shake despite the situation he was in. Why would Dick be trying to make Tim afraid like this? What could he possibly have to gain from it?

Even more importantly, what was he doing now? The shadow was still unmoving from under Tim’s doorway.

Tim sank down very slowly, careful not to make a noise in doing so, surprised to find his hands shaking just a bit as he braced them on the carpet. Even his carpet felt cold, the chill coming in from the hallway.

He leaned down slowly, careful to not make a noise, and peeked under the door.

Again. Nothing.

Nothing was there. No sign of anyone standing there, even though the shadows had been there, were still there. Tim stared down at them, at the evidence right in front of him that someone had to be standing there, legs creating a break in the light being cast from the hall. There was just nothing there to make them.

It made no sense.

Tim’s head shot up when his doorknob started to slowly turn, the knob catching on the lock.

He dropped back down to try to get another look.

Dick was right there, brilliant blue eye staring back at him from under the door fame where he was pressed right up against it on the other side. Tim didn’t scream, but he reeled back in terror, kicking out at his door as he crawled back away, now abjectly terrified and shaking like a leaf.

That blue eye continued to stare in at him, practically glowing with its intensity from the crack under his door. “Come here, Tim.”

“No!” Tim shouted in reflexive horror.

Dick’s voice was soft in contrast to Tim’s. “Then just open the door, Tim, and I will come to you. Come here, Tim.”

Tim’s mind caught for a moment in childlike panic. Bruce had trained them better, but that was in reference to villains. But this was Dick, and Tim… he was in danger. Nothing about that made sense, and Tim cried out again in frustration for being unable to understand, before suddenly remembering his phone. He needed to call for help. For backup. It was on his desk, and he shuffled himself back across his wet floor and felt around for it, not wanting to turn away for a second in case Dick moved out of his sight again. He found it, shaking hand nearly dropping it as he pulled it down into his lap.

“Open the door, Tim. Bruce is out here. Bruce wants you to open the door. You always want to please Bruce, don’t you?”

“Fuck off!” Tim growled, opening up his phone. He wasn’t about to fall for that, knowing Bruce was out.

“Tim?”

Tim froze with his finger over his emergency button. His blood chilled in his veins because he had just heard what was unmistakably Bruce. No doubt about it, Bruce’s voice had just been on the other side of the door, and Dick was still there. Still peering in at him with that bright chilling eye, now looking delighted.

Bruce’s voice spoke again. “Tim, come here.”

He didn’t know how. He didn’t know how Dick had done that, how or why he was doing any of this, but Dick didn’t appear to move when that door handle started to slowly turn again, catching once more on the lock.

“Tim, come here,” Bruce’s voice demanded now, angry.

He wasn’t there, Tim knew that. He coudn’t be. He couldn’t be doing saying that. But Dick couldn’t imitate Bruce’s voice that perfectly either. Even if he could, Tim hadn’t seen that grin move from Dick’s face for him to be the one doing it.

Tim’s hands shook so badly now that he could barely hang onto his phone, the chill he felt so deep that he was shivering all over, and he struggled to hit the emergency signal, managing it at last. The others would all know now, they would-

“Tim!” Dick’s voice demanded now, also angry, and the handle started to turn and shake at a terrifying speed, but it remained locked. “Come here, Tim. Open. The. Door!”

Tim dropping his phone when his whole door suddenly rattled on its hinges from a hard thump hitting it. with Dick still on the ground, still staring in at him, he had no idea how it was possible. “Stop!” he dared to shout, to demand. “Stop- just stop!” he screamed, fully flooded with terror now despite himself, as he came to terms with the fact that this thing, whatever it was, couldn’t possibly be Dick.

That was better, and worse all at once, because if it was something controlling his brother, then there was a very real danger that Dick might be used to do something really horrendous to Tim once he got inside. And that fear, unknown to Tim prior on this level, managed to freeze Tim in place despite all his training, because whatever it was… it was going to get in. The wood around the doorhandle was starting to crack right in front of his eyes.

It was going to get in. It was going to hurt him. He was going to-

The wood finally gave, splintering into his room as Tim’s stomach dropped so violently it was a wonder he didn’t vomit from the sensation of it, but he was too afraid, shoving himself back against his desk as the door swung open. _He’s going to kill me_ , screamed a last coherent thought. Dick’s eye vanished in the wake of the door swinging open into Tim’s room. The figure that filled his door rushed forward and Tim put his hands up, bracing to at least try to fend off his death.

Except it wasn’t Dick standing there, but Jason, looking rather stunned even in the dim glow of Tim’s computer monitors as he towered over him.

“Tim? What-

Tim’s attention darted past him, eyes darting all around the open doorway behind the man, seeing the hall empty. Where was that thing? Where was he? Jason had to have stepped right over him to come in. How could he have possibly missed it? How could it just be gone?

Tim trembled violently, fear spiking once more that it would reappear at any moment as his brain struggled to understand. When Jason said something else and stepped towards him, Tim flinched back again in frantic fear. “No! Don’t- don’t let him in! The hallway… it was just-

Jason flinched back, uncertain of what to do, how to help, what was causing this distress in him. How could he be so confused? How had he missed Dick peeking in on Tim when he had been right there? “Tim, what’s going on? Don’t let _who_ in?”

“D-Dick,” Tim heard escaping his lips, answer uncertain as anything because even though he didn’t understand either, he also knew that that wasn’t the right answer. He just didn’t know what was.

Jason’s brows drew together then. “Dick? Tim, he’s still in bed. Bruce and the brat are with him now. Constantine thought he found a way to undo whatever voodoo has Goldie down for the count. We were just in the middle of it when you sent out an emergency signal and the old man sent me to check on you since he couldn’t stop in the middle of relaying John’s anti-spells. Why didn’t you answer me when I called through the door for you?

Jason hadn’t been there calling for him. Dick had been… and Bruce and… well, neither of them either, but whatever had been there hadn’t been Jason. Tim hadn’t heard Jason at all, even from just the other side of the door. None of it made any sense.

Why was it suddenly gone? Even the cold… it had been so real before, Tim had nearly seen his own breath forming, and now that was gone too.

Jason slowly inched in on Tim again, but Tim flinched back hard enough to bash his head against the side of his desk.

Jason winced and backed off. “Tim-

“What are you imbeciles doing?” Damian’s voice cut into the room, causing the both of them to jump before Jason rounded on him. Despite the snide question, however, there was only a trepid hopefulness in Damian’s face for once. “In case you were wondering, father was successful in performing Constantine’s spells. That magic-peddler surmised it likely that Grayson was experiencing a minor possession by whatever those rubes had tried to summon up from some hell or another. The spells he clownishly referred to as an ‘exorcism-light’ have worked. Grayson has finally woken up.”

Jason’s breath catching in his throat was a soft noise, but in the absolute silence that followed that declaration it was perfectly audible, even winning out against the beating of Tim’s heart as it still hammered in his own head.

“He’s awake?” Jason reiterated, the same cautious hope that had been in Damian’s expression now in his voice.

Damian merely nodded a confirmation, before those green eyes turned down to Tim where he was still sitting in a damp patch of spilled coffee against his desk. “You’re going to die, Drake. Pennyworth will kill you for not getting a towel on that.”

X

Tim hadn’t said any more about what he had seen as he had followed on shaky legs after Jason and Damian, back down the hall to Dick’s room. He wasn’t sure what to say. He could tell them, and they might even believe him- maybe. Given the fact Dick might have actually been possessed, it lent some credence to the possibility he hadn’t just fever dreamed it all. Despite that, he kept his mouth shut, and his eyes continuously darted around the hall with each step. If it had been a demon or some other hell-creature messing with him… it hardly made Tim feel any better about the absolute fear and panic he had let overcome him, or take away the images of Dick coming after him that would likely haunt his nightmares for months to come.

He didn’t want to talk about it yet. He wasn’t sure he could even explain it clearly if he tried.

He felt separated from himself as he watched Jason and Damian rush to Dick’s bed ahead of him, seeing Dick sitting up for the first time in almost two days. His beaming smile was familiar and warm, not the twisted malicious thing it had been from under Tim’s door.

Tim still wanted to knock his teeth out so they couldn’t twist into that horrid smile.

Those blue eyes were bright, but they weren’t glowing and unblinking as they watched him.

Tim still wanted to gouge them in for fear they might do so.

Those were horrific thoughts, even to himself. He knew that, knew that they were irrational and unfair to his elder brother, who had just gone through his own ordeal separate from Tim whether he was fully aware of it or not. They’re just thoughts brought on by fear and maybe some trauma, Tim assured himself.

Even so, when Dick’s eyes fell upon him, his stomach twisted painfully until Dick blinked normally and turned them back up to Bruce next, smile still shining, Dick still his normal self. “Not the worst curse I’ve ever been under. Not by far. Those demons are losing their touch,” he was saying to the man.

Bruce didn’t joke back, merely running a hand through Dick’s hair, relief etched deep upon his face. “It was a minor possession, Dick. Be thankful nothing bad came of it.”

Jason rounded the other side of the bed, laying a punch into Dick’s shoulder, solid enough to make the older man flinch and try to return the favor, swing too slow to connect. “Next time you want to catch up on your sleep, just take a vacation like a normal person,” Jason scolded him before sending another hit- softer this time- into the same spot as further reprimand for Dick’s miss.

This time Dick just laughed and flipped him off. “Hey, no beating up on those that are bedridden and helpless.”

Tim stamped down the passing desire for Jason to hit him again, harder this time. He cussed himself up one side and down the other for such thoughts. Dick was fine. Everyone was fine. If anyone was being a problem now it was Tim, having such horrific thoughts when Dick was none the wiser.

It was fine, he assured himself. Dick was awake. He was awake, and Tim was safe again. That was what mattered.

And still he hung back, long enough that it was noticed, as the rest of the family crowded around their awakened member. Dick’s eyes found him once again, smile lifting.

“Come here, Tim.”


End file.
